1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to firearms and more particularly to drop floor plate, rearward, breech loading rifles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Rifles on the market today, typified by the Remington 700 Series and others, are less than satisfactory because of the loading and unloading mechanism of the rifle. To load cartridges, they must be inserted one at a time. To remove unfired cartridges, the rifle includes a hinged floor plate which, when unlatched, drops open to permit removal of shells. A folded leaf spring, attached at its one end to the floor plate, is utilized to urge the shells upward in position to enter the firing chamber. The inconvenience of the latched drop floor plate is well known. Most of the time, and especially in cold winter and in the dark, shells easily slip through the fingers of the hunter, falling to the ground where they may be lost or damaged. To eliminate the deficiencies of the factory-supplied rifle, it has been proposed to substitute a magazine chamber which may be removed totally from the rifle and which contains the shells in stacked relationship, ready to be used upon reinsertion. Replacement kits such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,739 to Haines, et al and U.S. Pat. No. 2,997,803 to Florence enable the owner or a gunsmith to make alterations in the stock-supplied rifles. The central problem with replacement kits relates to the latching means to secure the magazine within the rifle. The Haines patent itself points out this problem in the background.
The Haines solution requires the hunter to use two hands, one to push upward and hold a finger piece in this position to cause a latch pin to raise. Thereafter, presumably the other hand can be utilized to slide the magazine rearwardly to disengage it from a lip and groove whereupon the assembly will drop out of the rifle.
Florence utilizes a spring also, but Florence provides a finger release which is operable within the trigger bow. A dangerous situation might result here as the hunter's trigger finger may accidentally trigger the release while firing or firing the round in the chamber while unloading. Furthermore, this reference uses an externally mounted spring pin which both detracts from the rifle's appearance and affords opportunity to admit grease or grime to the spring mechanism. Also, a backward sliding of the magazine to disengage it from the rifle is also required.
Other latching mechanisms are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,642,688 and 2,657,489 but each of these latches is also externally mounted and thereby gives a "lump" appearance to the rifle stock.